How to get the best out of the Hiring Process

One cannot underestimate the importance of hiring the best employees for your business. Bradford D. Smart has developed a concept: Topgrading. Dr. Smart states that employees should be classified as A, B, or C, with A’s being the highest calibre. As you work to develop your business, he recommends that hiring or promoting should initially be only for the top positions and the company should strive to hire as many A employees as practical. Then allow these managers over time to promote or hire their reports. His experience has proven that A’s tend to hire A’s. And A managers can develop some B and C employees to become A’s. While this will take a long time it is a 12 step process that will enable a company to hire employees where 70-80% of these hires will be superior performers but not all A’s. The process will upgrade all employees. Historically, only 25% of the new hires are superior performers for a larger business and much lower per cent for smaller employers.

You do not have to go through his full process, although reading his work would be beneficial. These are some recommendation from him and other sources that you can start with today.

Does your business have a job description for each position? Not only should it have the tasks defined in detail, it should indicate how performance on these tasks will be measured and how often. Are there any of these skills that the prospective employee must have to be considered for employment? Which are trainable? If so, how will the training be accomplished?

Many hiring managers within a business place primary emphasis on the CV, with some emphasis on the interview. And often the deciding factor was whether you liked the prospective employee or not. Resumes definitely should be downplayed, as recent surveys have found that 50% of all resumes include falsehoods. More people are using resume writing services, and these writers are very adept at highlighting only the best points. This is to be expected, and should be recognized as a given in the process. The resume has done its job when it gets the individual the initial interview with the business. While they are important for the initial screening, they should not be a primary factor in the decision process.

Interviewing candidates for your business is absolutely critical, and you must recognize that, with all the pre-employment/interview training and coaching, these interviews can be faked. You can no longer just ask the potential employee to talk about his past job or jobs. Look for gaps in their employment which may not be on the resume or may be glossed over. Develop a set of introspective questions; ask the person how he/she dealt with some issue in the past; discuss some of their accomplishments and, more importantly, some areas in their history where they may not have performed as well as they could have. Find out what they like to do outside of work and business. During the entire process be aware of the non-verbal signals you are getting. If possible, don’t be the only person interviewing for a new employee. Have another employee(s) interview him or her even if they may be at the same managerial level in your business. You could consider team interviews, but they do have some issues.

If it is a critical position definitely consider some pre-employment testing. There are many good relatively-inexpensive tools that can be purchased on the internet which will give you an analysis of the potential employee that you can never get in an interview. I am a proponent of DiSC, but there are many others, including Myers-Briggs, Berke, and Chrysalis.

When you ask for references, it is a given fact that the references you are given are the best the prospective employee has. How do you get solid information from a business they previously worked for, especially with the legal restrictions on the information that can be given by the individual giving the reference? Always ask if they would hire the individual as an employee again and pause after the answer to see if you get more information. Ask open-ended questions and pause to wait for an answer. Try to ask a few questions that the person giving the reference may not be able to answer. If that happens, ask if another employee within the previous business they worked in may be better at answering that question. Talk with other people in the industry or local area that may know the individual.

One of the immutable laws of management is “Packard’s Law.” No company can grow consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement the growth, and still become a great company.